


Of Heartbreak and Cups of Tea

by GuardianQwerty



Series: Heid Collection  (Placeholder name) [3]
Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: Adultery, Angst, Betrayal, Crying, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Heartbreak, Help, Hurt Aaron Hotchner, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Pre-Relationship, Tea
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-18
Updated: 2020-08-18
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:27:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25975174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GuardianQwerty/pseuds/GuardianQwerty
Summary: After the Milwaukee serial killer Hotch arrives home to try and fix his marriage, but what he finds on arrival will be hard to come back from.
Relationships: Aaron Hotchner/Haley Hotchner, Aaron Hotchner/Spencer Reid
Series: Heid Collection  (Placeholder name) [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1878922
Comments: 9
Kudos: 152





	Of Heartbreak and Cups of Tea

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so this is based off the back of Season 3, Episode 2 'In Name and Blood'.

Hotch knew it was a mistake to leave, especially after their fight. However, the team needed him and Emily, he had to, and even though Haley kept saying the BAU is what he does, not who he is, he knows she is wrong. It might not have been the life she wanted when they married, but they were required to be there for each other in richness and poorness, sickness and health. Required to be there for one another and help each other as they moved through life, not offer ultimatums and throw their choices back in shame. They were supposed to work through challenges and come out the other end as one.

He sometimes forgot why he did the job, but in the end it all came back to Jack and Hayley, to keep them safe from the world. He spends his days looking at gruesome files of murders, rapes and so much more so others don’t have to. He loves his job, the process, the profiling and ultimately the justice and closure they serve. It’s complicated, but it is who he is and to demand that he change that, essentially is too much for him. And that is the conclusion he had come to. He was going to lay it all out for her, discuss their relationship, present his points and hopefully move forward with some type of compromise. He loves his family and wants it to work for both of them and Jack. He knows too well what broken homes can do to people and he had no intention of creating one for Jack.

When he came home, he noticed the lights were turned off. Most likely they were all asleep as it was past eleven. He didn’t expect a light to be left on for him as he actually wasn’t due home till the following morning. He hoped the surprise would be worth it. Unlocking the front door and pushing it inwards he entered the house, gently placing his keys in the little bowl on the side table, before dropping his bags against the wall; he would deal with them tomorrow. For now, he just wanted to kiss his sons head and hold his wife close. The case while in retrospect a good ending, was gruelling. The unsub had trained his own son to bring him victims and had not a care in world of the kid’s future, as an inoperable brain tumour would take him before he could watch his son grow up. That kid’s life will be forever changed, and it will be a long healing process, one he may never recover from. He pushed the thought from his mind as he went to look for the only boy that he needed to care for at that moment.

He walked up the stairs and down the hallway to his son’s bedroom. Looking in he saw the small form enthralled in the blankets, hopefully dreaming happy thoughts. He crept in, remaining silent and kneeling before his son. He pulled the blanket higher, covering the small boy’s shoulder, before leaning forward and placing a loving kiss to his forehead. He spent a solid ten minutes just watching the rise and fall of his chest, stroking the boy’s hair, enjoying the moment and being close to his child. He tried to do this every time he was home, it made him feel warm inside, especially with all the destruction he sees every day. 

Getting up, he backed out of the room, closing the door behind him quietly and savouring the look of complete peace stretched across Jack’s face and body. He began to retreat to the master bedroom, prepared to hold his wife, be close and at least start the healing process of their earlier argument. He could see the light from inside the room flood out from the beneath the door. Good, Haley was awake. Carefully he opened the door, “Haley, we need to talk, I know I screwed u-“ Hotch stopped talking as the first thing he noticed after the door swung inwards was not the smell of his wife’s shampoo or the navy-blue paint that wrapped around the walls. No, it was a deep red shirt on the floor, it was not one of Haley’s and it sure as hell wasn’t his. He stepped into the room and braced himself for what he knew he would find. To his left was not one body form, but two. One was his wife, naked from the waist up, currently arms pushing away from the male figure in front of her. He stood there, completely shocked, frozen to the spot. Feelings, emotions and thoughts running freely across his face. His mind cast back to when someone called the house three days prior, but promptly hung up.

He felt angry, but not at Haley, at himself. Angry that he couldn’t fix their relationship before it got to this point. He stood staring as the two people in front of him scrambled to find an excuse and cover up. It wasn’t until Haley spoke that he felt a burning need to run. “Aaron, it’s not what it looks like,” she responded, except he knew it was exactly what it looked like, there was no returning from this. So, before she could shout for him to stop, he ran. He bolted from the room, down the stairs, straight to the door picking his bags back off the floor and keys from the small bowl. He briefly heard a ‘wait’ yelled at him as he opened the front door. He stopped momentarily, turning to the woman dressed in nothing but a robe. His eyes started to fill with tears, his stoic face becoming harder to hold as he witnessed her own embarrassment. He felt betrayed, “I wanted to fix things, I came home early to try for you, for Jack.” At the mention of Jack’s name, he felt more emotion than he could handle, tears running freely. Jack’s name also caused her to cover her mouth and cry. That is what he left seeing. He closed the door and continued to the car, jumping in quickly, starting the engine and reversing from the driveway.

He drove, drove for what felt like hours, trying to understand the image burnt to his brain. He knew they were in a hard spot, but how could she do this. Clearly it had been happening for a while and he wondered if she was ever going to tell him. If she would leave the other man once he had transferred to white collar crime, even though it was never going to happen. He wondered how she could do that to Jack, and how she could betray their vows. He understood she was mad and empathetically felt it all, it was the biggest issue with being a profiler; he felt and understood every feeling from both sides, what drove people to do certain things. He knew why she did it, the loneliness, the feelings of abandonment when he chose a case over his family, but it didn’t help to ease his pain. He felt his phone buzz multiple times, so much that he eventually turned it off, chucking it into the backseat. In this event he would drive to Gideon’s, they would talk, drink and he would get everything he wanted out into the open. But Gideon was gone. So, he just drove, drove until he rolled into a spot outside another colleague’s apartment. Eyes still fresh with tears, emotion plastered to his face, he stumbled out of his car, barely remembering to lock the vehicle as he entered the apartment complex. If someone saw him off the street, they may be convinced he was drunk. He laughed to himself as he thought about a drink and contemplated why he had ended up at a team members house rather than a bar. He trudged up the stairs, every step more exhausting than the last. Before he went home, he was tired, but now, now he was completely wiped, both emotionally and physically. He was in a world of constant turmoil, trying to figure out how to recover, how to get back his once idyllic life, though not perfect, he wanted the normality back.

He stood outside the door of his colleagues, completely ignoring the inappropriateness of the situation. Protocols out the window, he just needed someone to talk to, someone to comfort him and tell him that it would all work out in the end. He stuck his hand up with the limited energy he had left and knocked. Waiting. It was exactly after that he realised that it was one in the morning, but he didn’t care. With no response, he knocked once more. If his friend didn’t answer he would leave, probably end up with a glass of scotch and back in the office; he would sleep on his couch or something. Before he went to leave, however, a similarly exhausted man swung the door inwards and stood in front of him, full length pyjamas with TARDIS’s filling the material and his shoulder length hair a mess from most likely the sleep he had just awoken from. He momentarily felt a smile under his tear stained face, joyed by the appearance of someone he knows in front of him, but the slight happiness vanished within seconds. There was a shocked look on the man’s face. He realised at that point he probably looked like hell. “Hotch!?!” Reid questioned, becoming more coherent as he realised the mess in front of him. Hotch just stepped past him, aware of the stunned look that was etched into Reid’s face. He entered the apartment and stalked his way to the open window. The room had many bookcases; novels with varying colour, size and topics littered the shelves. The walls were avocado green and reminded him of toned-down Victorian era interiors. It was very Reid. He stood in the room taking note of the details, distracting his mind for hopes of not loosing the remaining dignity he had.

Reid moved around him quietly, yet he still heard the footsteps, the sound of a kettle being turned on, a clinking of mugs being pulled from a cupboard. He heard it all but continued to stare out the window into the nights sky, feeling a light breeze touch his skin enough to add shivers to his body.

He didn’t know how long he stood there, and it wasn’t until a soft hand tugged on his elbow that he looked around. There in front of him stood the youngest member of the team holding a cup of tea. Hotch took it appreciatively and he felt his body carry himself to the couch behind him. He sat deeply into the leather and took a sip of hot drink, the liquid warming his throat. It was a strong cup; one he had not had before. The small dash of milk made it mirror is ideal brew. He placed the mug on a nearby coffee table, and it was that moment he noticed his hands were shaking like a leaf, combined with the chills, he felt close to panic. Fresh tears welled in his eyes, anger swelled deep below and the need to fix this with a rewind button prominent in his thoughts. “Hotch, what happened?” Reid asked, over his thoughts. It was the soft and calm voice he used when talking to scared children, but more caring. He rubbed his eyes, trying to rid the constant stream with no success. “I came home, and all I wanted to do was hold her, hold Jack. The case. I knew we were on the rocks, but I was going to fix it, I wanted to fix it. Then there was a shirt…” he sat there recalling the night, between sobs. He had never shown this amount of emotion to anyone at work ever. It was a strict policy that he kept his two lives separate. His main issue is he really didn’t have any friends apart from his work colleagues, which was a sad statement in itself. Reid had stiffened almost immediately after he heard the word ‘shirt’. They are profilers, it wasn’t hard to put two and two together. Reid unsure of what to do in the uncharted territory of helping his boss in this way, attempted the only thing he thought would provide some comfort during this emotional time. He pulled Hotch into a hug; it was awkward on the couch and he felt like he was breaking every protocol in the book. The last time he had hugged Hotch was after the Hankel case mostly reassuring him that he didn’t actually mean to call him a narcissist. Even with the alarms going off in his head it also felt right. Hotch openly began to weep with more force, choking out the sentence Reid knew was coming, “she-she cheated on me.”

It was a long time before Hotch withdrew from the hug. He wiped his face, the tears had dried up with much of the liquid soaked into the shoulder of Reid’s pyjamas. He felt the exhaustion of his body once more and sank back into the couch, picking the mug off the table and sipping carefully. Reid sat next to him in silence, no questions asked, just sat with him, there for him. “You know I came home ready to fix it all. I wasn’t going to leave the BAU, but I wanted to work on a solution, I wanted to compromise, I wanted to make it work. I had a big speech planned and I just wanted to be with her and love her.” Hotch broke the silence with soft words, intermittently breaking sentences with sobs and deep breaths. “I wanted to work on it and then I saw his shirt, and I saw them half naked in OUR bed, and she had the audacity to say, ‘it’s not what it looks like.’ Really?” His voice possessed controlled anger with sorrow, shock and unrelenting pain. “I feel a lot of things Reid, emotionally that is and the one thing that I’m most furious about, is she did it with Jack in the house. She had an affair while our son slept down the hallway.” His voice stayed the same, small snippets of anger entering his speech throughout. He felt resentful and betrayed, but most of all heartbroken. The woman he had loved for so many years cheated on him. “I know I wasn’t there when I should have been, but that shouldn’t lead to this.” He continued to rake his exhausted brain, trying to figure out what to do. “I don’t know what to do Reid, how on earth do I move forward!” It was more of a statement than a question. He knew Reid wouldn’t have an answer, but he was grateful for the tea and the shoulder to quite literally cry on. “Hotch, I am truly sorry for happened and as much as I want to share knowledge on statistics about marriages and adultery, I doubt it will help. This is the first time I’m not able to use my vast knowledge to fix a situation or guide to a solution and I’m not sure how to proceed. However, if anyone can figure out how to move forward, how to make it work for both Haley and Jack, it is you.” Reid stumbled through each sentence, he really wanted to tell Hotch that it would all be okay, or that it was a dream and he would wake up momentarily, but he couldn’t offer that. He reached his hand out and interlocked his fingers into the older man’s, holding it through the tremors and pain. In any other situation holding your boss’s hand may seem completely out of line, but in this situation it just felt appropriate. “If you need somewhere to stay tonight you are welcome to my sofa. It’s not much but it’s better than the car.” Reid continued, Hotch squeezed his hand in a silent thank you.

They continued to sit, fingers interlocked, opposite hands curled around individual mugs of steaming tea. Reid usually enjoyed the quiet, but this was too quiet, so it wasn’t long until he began filling it with facts and figures about Doctor Who. He figured it was the most unrelated topic he could find and might distract his unit chief from the chaotic mess his life had devolved into. Hotch let his words run, enjoying the tangent and fully relaxing into his bed for the night. Hotch began to fade, the full exhaustion catching up with him and within thirty minutes of Reid’s monologue he had drifted off to sleep. Reid only stopped talking when he noticed the mug nearly slip out of Hotch’s relaxed hand. He quickly grabbed it before it smashed and awoke the now sleeping man. He got up from his spot on the couch, carefully unlacing his fingers from Hotch’s hand. He then proceeded to pick the man’s legs up, placing them on the couch and pulling his shoes and socks from his feet. It felt natural to help his mentally wounded boss this way. He also continued this by carefully undoing the tie that was tightly wound under the collar. He threaded the top button of his shirt loose before taking the blanket that was thrown over the back of the couch. He softly placed it on the man. Reid looked down at his unit chief, noting the rise and fall of his chest and observed the dried tears, puffy cheeks and shabby hair no doubt caused by the man constantly running his hands through it from the nights stress.

Tomorrow would be another day, tomorrow, a new start. For now, the man needed to sleep, to recover his energy so he could make the right decision with all his facilities at his disposal. Reid padded back to his bed, thinking he was glad Hotch came to him, rather than turning to a bottle to deal with this tumultuous heartbreak.

**Author's Note:**

> Another one done. I really wanted to focus more on the platonic side of Hotch and Reid, however I do read between the lines for their relationship. I might do a part 2, but unsure where to take this one, so no promises. Let me know if you would like that. 
> 
> Thank you for the read, I hope you enjoyed it. Also if you have any comments and feedback it is appreciated.


End file.
